5 comments about Just Above the Mantelpiece: Mass-Market Masterpieces.

1. You'll be wide-eyed with amazement at the comprehensiveness of Wayne Hemingway's book. Page after page of real pop art. This stuff sold in the millions and some of it probably still is. Mainly seen from a British and Continental perspective, so no poker playing dogs by CM Coolidge, the book rightly kicks off in the fifties with the king of kitsch Vladimir Tretchikoff and his painted ladies and then meanders through crying boys, street urchins, doe-eyed pets and ends with what I thought was nice touch, the British poster company Athena in the late eighties.
   
   Despite the fact that these paintings were very popular with the working class as far as I can see very few of the artists are particularly good. Being popular does not equate with professionalism for this market segment. None of them seem to have the draughtsmanship of, for example, Norman Rockwell or Charles Wysocki. These pop art reproductions probably sold in their millions because they displayed the right sort of sentimental image and were pre-framed and cheap, obviously the perfect buy.
   
   The book is a pop art production itself I thought. Many of the pages use eighties wallpaper as a background for the text and paintings and someone had the bright idea of tipping in several of the paintings as removal prints (though I wonder how many book owners removed them?) so you'll be able to have your own gallery above the mantelpiece.
   
   ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.



2. 'Just Above The Mantlepiece' is a weird journey through your childhood that will bring back good and bad memories of the art prints that adorned your quirky Aunt & Uncles house or your sisters room. This art is fast becoming highly collectible again through the resurgence of the 'Big Eye' art movement made famous by Margaret Keane. Remember those sad big-eyed animals,the misfit and street urchin paintings,the crying children, Tretchikoff's Green Lady and 50's exotic women, the voluptuous South Sea Island brunettes of JH Lynch, the cute Maio girls with cats or mandolins, and those little Go Go kids by Eve or Lee. You do? Well this book is full of such mass market art memories, a popular art genre never before acknowleged or given respect in such a glorious way. This book even has some pages printed with an extra copy of the art for framing, as it was meant to be. A true Celebration of our popular culture, and a great reference guide for the lounge art collector. Robert Rechter.



3. Neat treatment of the subject that mercifully ISN'T loaded with campy, "hip" contempt or irony. Hemingway genuinely likes this stuff and so do I. American readers will be entertained because much of this is British or European mass-market art that wasn't as popular here, but should have been! I'm amazed at the selection British big-eyes paintings that are such odd relations to their Keaney American cousins. The book has a great design with several of the lithos duplicated "post-it" style over their pages in the book so you can take them out and frame them yourself while keeping the book intact. Unfortunately they're not necessarily the ones I would have picked, like the Tretchikoffs, probably for copyright reasons. Come on, manufacturers, take a tip from Hemingway's book and let's bring back the days of saucer-eyed kidz, bright oil-painting colors and .... as accents for the living room!



4. Andy Warhol understood the conflict between the tastes of the masses and what's considered "Good Art" by the cognoscenti. His soup can and Marilyn Monroe took common icons and created pop icons instantly. This was one of the 20th Century's most brilliant comments on "us" and the world of art. The conflict between the rarified world of fine art and popular art is really fascinating, and this book hits the mark.

   King of Kitsch Hemmingway does a great job here of describing various popular artworks and why they've made the transition from "bad" to "beloved." A fun book, and a great concept, complete with peel-off art for your very own.




5. Flipping through this book one day, I was shocked, or rather, surprised to finally look at a painting I'd seen featured in two favorite films: Performance (1970) and Frenzy (1972) and also used on the first Sound Gallery CD cover. I remembered this painting growing up yet never knew who the artist was. So naturally, I bought the book.

   The English have a habit of fondly holding on to the past, at least when it comes to pop culture. This book certainly does that. Crammed full of incredible artwork form people once considered disposable, yet now highly reveered. The text is somewhat hard to read and not particularly extensive, but its almost irrelevant. What matters are the gorgeous reproductions of the art. And many of them are printed twice so you can peel them off for future framing - what a great idea!

   If you can appreciate 'trash' for what its worth and have a passion for some truly amazing art, this book is absolutely worth buying. Within time, I predict some of these artists will be considered downright hip and adored by the right people, but still, this book is great. Take a look in the attic, one of these paintings may be there...

1 comments about Arranging Things: A Rhetoric of Object Placement.

1. This idea for this book sold it, and I was intrigued. Alas, it was impossible to enjoy reading, and I did finally give up less than halfway through. Large type and flimsy wording is compounded by the need to refer to the back of the book's footnotes in almost every paragraph. This is so annoying and completely disrupts the flow of reading. The pictures are somewhat interesting, but the author states in the beginning that the paintings were done separately from the writing, therefore they have little relation to each other. The author apparently couldn't figure out his theme till after the illustrations were made! This too makes the book choppy. A waste of time and money.

No comments about Native Americans in Early Photographs (American Photography Series).

1 comments about Johannes Vermeer 1632-1675: 1632-1675 (Rijksmuseum Dossiers).

1. Mariet Westermann writes elegantly and with wisdom about this poetic Dutch Master. As a collaborator with Alejandro Vergara on his Vermeer and the Dutch Interior, the beautiful catolog for this show at The Prado in 2003, she wrote "Vermeer and the Interior Imagination," one of the most insightful essays about the artist penned over the last 30 years. In the present work, she focusses upon the four Vermeers now lodged in the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam)--the Kitchen Maid, the Little Street, the Love Letter, and the Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, four of the most sublime works in Vermeer's canon. Interspersed with the text for illustrative, comparative purposes are high quality reproductions of other paintings, many by Vermeer himself, including the best reproduction I have seen of Vermeer's indelible Art of Painting.
   
   Although Westermann uncovers no new ground, she does provide a wider scholarly forum for the compelling research by the London architect, Philip Steadman (do read his Vermeer's Camera) who has demonstrated not only Vermeer's use of the camera obscura but also has built a convincing case for the location of the Little Street (behind the Mechelin, the family inn in Delft). She also captures Vermeer's interest in the philosophy of perception so prevalent in the intellectual milieu of Vermeer's compass, as well as the early scientific efforts (particularly in the nascent field of optics) that accompanied speculation about perception.
   
   Westermann occasionally makes claims she cannot substantiate, such as vouching for Vermeer's actual conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, and suffers a minor lapse by ignoring Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid, a painting in the love letter tradition Vermeer likely made after 1670, a time when Westerman states that the theme "may have been exhausted for ambitious modern painting." She also missed an excellent opportunity to expand on her earlier writings about the importance to Vermeer's art of a concept the Dutch called "houding," a theoretical precept by which painters of Vermeer's era sought to demonstrate their mastery by blending abstract, almost musically harmonious perspective design with convincing illusions of images in space to fool the eye and engage the viewer.
   
   Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) should be appreciated by scholars and neophytes alike, providing as it does so much relevant information about this complex artist with such beauty in highly accessible fashion.

5 comments about Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle.

1. I love this book. I remember my mother reading me a kid's version of Rip Van Winkle when I was little. Now, I am thrilled to find a version illustrated by one of my favorite fairy tale illustrators. Even though Rackham's art is somewhat darker (colors and style) than some other classic fairy tale artists, it speaks to me the most, bringing the characters to full life. This is probably one of my favorite fairy tale stories of all time and I am thrilled to have a book with illustrations that do it justice. I recommend this for fans of both fairy tales and art.



2. The character of Rip Van Winkle is like an older version of Peter Pan, overgrown and frumpy. He seeks to enjoy his life and in doing so engages in mostly childish activities. Adulthood bores him, as it should, because he excels at leisure as much as Ben Franklin stands out in industry.
   
   Rip reads well to married people, who seem to be the ideal audience for the story. The detached approach Irving takes in describing the "henpecking wife" and "curtain lectures" is comical to married couples, husbands in particular. It is a great comfort for men in 2005 to learn that the traffic of henpecking was a one-way street then, too. :)
   
   The character of Rip is admirable. How lucky to be free to do nothing and experience no remorse. He is harmless, and a great credit to the community in entertainment value and spontenaity. By enjoying simple things, he understands the best things in life are free, such as the view from the mountain top and pulling a fish out of the stream. He is good for conversation, non-judgmental, agreeable, and rather kind. Strange, but it seems he could be a fine pastor or priest.
   
   The comedy of this story seems to be the escape from his hellish home life. Some have described heaven as a place of rest, away from the burdens of the world. So Rip, on the mountaintop, taking in a beautiful sight, after a day of shooting squirrels, has some delicious liquor, and falls asleep until two tyrants are deposed; his wife and King George.



3. Washington Irving's 'Rip Van Winkle' originally appeared in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819) alongside another evocative piece of Americana, 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,' a wondrous story equally set in Irving's beloved Hudson River Valley. Though not as multilayered as its longer and slightly more well known fellow, 'Rip Van Winkle' also has long roots in Old World folklore, which is appropriate, since The Sketch Book was the first book by an American writer to be taken seriously by the European audiences that then set the standard in the West. Like the earlier A Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809), 'Rip Van Winkle' is playfully attributed to Dutch antiquarian "Diedrich Knickerbocker," the most famous and certainly the most charming of several personae Irving adopted as an author.
   
   Written in simple but gorgeously visionary language, 'Rip Van Winkle' is the story of the lazy but warm spirited farmer, who, in an effort to escape the "petticoat despotism" of his "termagant" wife, flees for an afternoon's hunting in the lonely, autumnal Catskill Mountains. Accompanied only by Wolf, his faithful but equally harassed dog, Rip is surprised when he notices an odd figure approaching through the wilderness and calling out his name. The "short, square built old fellow with thick bushy hair and a grizzled beard" is carrying a "stout keg," and gestures to Van Winkle to assist him with his burden.
   
   Taking up the "flagon," Rip hesitantly follows the little man into an isolated ravine, and thus steps unknowingly into fairyland; there he finds himself confronted by a solemn and outlandishly dressed party of dwarfs playing at ninepins. Bewildered, Rip pours out the beverage for the assemblage, but can't resist taking a drink himself. Awaking on the mountainside, Van Winkle, finding Wolf gone and a badly rusted gun at his side, returns to town, where he discovers his home in ruins, his wife dead, his children grown to adulthood, the land of his birth now an independent nation freed from the yoke of the British, and himself a stranger to the villagers, who stare at his tattered clothing and exceptionally long facial hair. After making bewildered inquiries, he comes to accept that twenty years have passed.
   
   As a humble, good hearted, and mild tempered dreamer, Rip is an archetypal fairytale hero, though the only dragon slain is Dame Van Winkle, and she accidentally, by the passage of time itself. Like kindred spirit Ichabod Crane, Rip is not an absolute novice when it comes to the fantastic, for he has enjoyed telling the village children who love him "long stories about ghosts, witches, and Indians."
   
   As in traditional Celtic fairy lore, in which eating or drinking while visiting fairyland is often punished with permanent residency there, Rip had made the honest mistake of partaking of fairy foodstuffs, and thus pays an unintended price for doing so. For Celtic fairy lore also featured multiple variations on the theme of fairy time; one minute of perceived human time might be seven years of fairy time, and a man spending a happy week dancing in fairyland might discover that one hundred years or more has past on earth upon his return. Whether dwarfs, elves, boggarts, or fairies, Irving's little people are first cousins to many of the mythological beings of European mythology. Interestingly, like the literally "solitary" fairies of Ireland and Scotland, who were brusque of manner at best and never seen in groups (as were the far more gregarious "trooping" fairies), the little men Rip holds audience with "maintain the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence," and thus represent "the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed."
   
   But Irving, who deftly places his story in the historical setting of pre-Revolutionary America, also shrewdly offers his audience other interpretations for Van Winkle's strange mountain encounter. Though narrator Diedrich Knickerbocker acknowledges early that the Catskills are "fairy mountains," one character, sage Peter Vanderdonk, explains that it was the dead "Hendrick Hudson" himself, who returns with his crew every twenty years "to keep a guardian eye on the river," whom Rip encountered, while the postscript indeterminably discusses a variety of Indian spirits, including the Manitou, who haunt the region. One fact entirely overlooked by scholars everywhere is that American literature was born in the daimonic, a tradition begun by Irving but enthusiastically continued by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe.
   
   Like most of Irving's work, at present Rip Van Winkle is a grossly underappreciated piece of pure Americana; certainly American literature could have gotten off to a much worst beginning than it did than with its gallant, optimistic, and uncynical founder. For Rip, despite the precariousness of his experience, learns to accept his fate and settles into a comfortable old age as a venerated member of his community. Not that very long ago, there was a time in America when, taking a direct cue from the story itself, some of America's young schoolchildren were fancifully taught that thunder was not the result of lightning, but merely the echo of the elves' occasional game of mountain bowling.
   
   This definitive edition, first published in 1905, features over fifty genuinely "mesmerizing" though somber watercolor illustrations by British master Arthur Rackham, which perfectly suit Irving's text and will captivate both adults and children alike.



4. I really love this version of the story. I can't wait to share it with my 4th grade students who study New York history. I think it is pretty interesting.



5. This book is about a man who runs away from his father because the father does nothing but yell at him. This book is one of my favorites, even though I gave it a four, because it had a lot of action and it made me want to keep reading. Although I still think that the orignal was one of the better ones that have been written.

5 comments about A Diversity of Dragons (Pern).

1. This is strictly a story book, and wonderfully done. This is not meant to be a reference book. I love this book and keep it displayed in my living room.



2. I found this Anne McCaffrey book to be interesting, especially since I happened to read most of the books, or knew most of the storys referenced to in A Diversity of Dragons. The simple characters (including herself) were straightfoward, yet evasive, and the plot was complicated in its simplicity. The art work was extrordinary, and could only be displayed properly in the large book. Everytime I look at it I am amazed at the generous detail. All in all I believe that this book rates a five star for its simple honesty. Niether defending dragons or bashing them, but sharing their truths. This book is completely worth your time.



3. I got this book because I was doing a report about Dragons indifferent mythologies, and because I'm a fan of McCaffrey's. My firstreaction was: "What a HUGE book!" They could have made asmaller edition of it so it would actually fit my bookshelf. The pictures were beautiful, although it was sometimes slightly hard to tell which picture went with which story. The plot was okay, since it obviously wasn't meant to be a very fascinating one, although the ending completely let me down. An index of the dragons and page number references would also have proved extremely helpful, since the mythical and new-age dragons were completely scattered together. The worst part of the book I think were the quotes. Some of them got me interested in the books and made me add them to my wishlist, but most were just utterly boring. Also, at the end where the dragons were listed in tables, I found them to be scattered around completely wrong. Somebody seemed to have messed up with their computer. The reason I'm still giving this book 4 stars is for the paintwork, though. If you like fantasy art, this book will be excellent for you.



4. While A Diversity of Dragons is an indispensable resource on the history and development of dragons and their kin in both myth and fiction, the book's author ruined a great creation by adding an utterly stupid plot. It reads exactly like Webster's Unabridged sounds in audiobook format. The art looks great [in places], but for most of the time it looks as if the paint was covered with several layers of fine dust. Some sort of organization would have also helped this dying wonder - unless you are trying to read this unwieldy 1.5'x1' tome cover to cover, you will have no chance of finding a specific dragon reference. At the very least, they should have organized them into Legends and Modern Fiction. The plot, as mentioned earlier, is a true monster: a young man stumbles to Anne's house crying that he has trouble with dragons. Next follows a tea party that goes on for three days, after which the young man leads the group to a dragon's lair under his house. Abominable.

   This thin and yet monstrously oversized volume tore gashes in my skin with its razor-sharp corners, and bludgeoned my brain with its senseless organization. There are numerous, if highly superior, histories of mythical creatures, unfortunately most out of print (however, most can be found in libraries). I would advise you to steer clear of this one, but will not do so out of respect for Anne McCaffrey.




5. This book was my FAV. out of all the pern books, because it has tons of dragons, war and more than info. than the pic. on the cover gives you!

No comments about Psyche and the Arts: Jungian Approaches to Music, Architecture, Literature, Painting and Film.

No comments about Collected Works of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

No comments about Teaching Children Art.

1 comments about On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place.

1. On The Beaten Track is a collection of essays on the overlapping themes of art, tourism and culture. Lucy Lippard discusses many aspects of modern tourism's impact on local landscapes and people. She places special emphasis on areas she is familiar with --New Mexico and Maine. She is a perceptive and original cultural critic, introducing the reader to alternative interpretations of everyday sites. It has occurred to me in recent years that modern society increasingly resembles a giant theme park or museum, with everything fenced off and labelled for the convenience of conventional, middle class Americans (or Asians or Europeans, as the case may be). This is the sort of thing that Lippard explores in On The Beaten Track.I found her observations on museums especially thought-provoking. Are museums good for the arts or are they elitist institutions that dictate the meaning of art to the masses? This is the kind of question the book raises, without providing any simple answers. While I found the subject matter fascinating, I didn't find the book especially easy to read. While this isn't necessarily bad (not all books are meant to be easy), I find Lippard's style of writing a bit abstruse. In places she quotes one artist or writer after the other (or mentions examples of their works) without tying the various threads together. The style is perhaps analagous to a collage (I believe the author is an artist), and some readers will probably love it. More left-brained readers (e.g. me) may find this a bit perplexing, but we can still appreciate the many important questions and insights brought out in these essays.